Letting
Parents Decide (06/28/02) newBy Editors of The Washington Post
In affirming yesterday the constitutionality of Ohios use
of vouchers in Cleveland  one of the countrys most dramatically
failed school systems  the Supreme Courts conservative majority
rightly created wiggle room for states, localities and potentially even
Congress to try carefully designed voucher programs. The case split the
court along ideological lines, with the courts more liberal justices
all but declaring this voucher program to signify the end of church-state
separation. We dont belittle the dangers. But the dangers of vouchers
are hypothetical ones at this stage. The crisis in education is real.
And the court should not be insisting that the only lawful policies are
the ones that have already failed.

A
Win for Americas Children (06/28/02) newBy Rod Paige in The Washington Post
The No Child Left Behind Act, when fully implemented, will make
it easier to determine what works and what doesnt in Americas
schools, and it will carry consequences for failure. Among the consequences
are public school choice and access to supplemental educational services,
both underwritten by federal dollars. Now the Supreme Court has opened
the door to even broader school choices, not only ushering in a new era
in American education policy but also potentially starting a reformation
in American public education. What must emerge through this education
reformation should be a focus on students and achievement, rather than
on the system.

Federal
Appeals Court Rules Pledge of Allegiance Unconstitutional (06/26/02) newIn The Washington Post by David Kravets of Associated
Press
Harvard scholar Laurence Tribe predicted the U.S. Supreme Court
will certainly reverse the decision unless the 9th Circuit reverses itself.
I would bet an awful lot on that, Tribe said. The 9th Circuit
is the nations most overturned appellate court – partly because
it is the largest, but also because it tends to make liberal, activist
opinions, and because the cases it hears – on a range of issues from environmental
laws to property rights to civil rights – tend to challenge the status
quo.

One
Nation Under God (06/27/02) newBy Editors of The New York Times
This is a well-meaning ruling, but it lacks common sense. A generic
two-word reference to God tucked inside a rote civic exercise is not a
prayer. Mr. Newdows daughter is not required to say either the words
under God or even the pledge itself, as the Supreme Court
made clear in a 1943 case involving Jehovahs Witnesses. In the pantheon
of real First Amendment concerns, this one is off the radar screen. The
practical impact of the ruling is inviting a political backlash for a
matter that does not rise to a constitutional violation.

One
Nation Under Blank (06/27/02) newBy Editors of The Washington Post
If the court were writing a parody, rather than deciding an actual
case, it could hardly have produced a more provocative holding than striking
down the Pledge of Allegiance while this country is at war. We believe
in strict separation between church and state, but the pledge is hardly
a particular danger spot crying out for judicial policing. And having
a court strike it down can only serve to generate unnecessary political
battles and create a fundraising bonanza for the many groups who will
rush to its defense. Oh, yes, it can also invite a reversal, and that
could mean establishing a precedent that sanctions a broader range of
official religious expression than the pledge itself.

The
risks in the Rome Statute (07/02/02) newBy Editors of Haaretz
The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court goes into force
today, establishing for the first time a permanent institution for investigating
and judging people accused of crimes against humanity and war crimes.
The court, which will begin operating from The Hague next year, will have
the authority to judge individuals, based on complaints made to it by
governments or the UN Security Council.

Lone
stand for justice (07/01/02) newBy Editors of The London Telegraph
Hitherto, legal systems have been rooted in democratic assemblies.
Laws are passed by national legislatures, which are responsible to their
peoples, and treaties signed by accountable governments. But, from today,
the ICC will cast off the guy-ropes that attach it to its constituent
states. From now on, it will function as an international body answerable
to no one. The idea that laws ought to be made by the peoples representatives
will be replaced by the pre-modern concept that law-makers are answerable
to no one but themselves.

President
Bush Calls for New Palestinian Leadership (06/24/02) newGeorge W. Bush in The Rose Garden at The White House
I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not
compromised by terror. I call upon them to build a practicing democracy,
based on tolerance and liberty. If the Palestinian people actively pursue
these goals, America and the world will actively support their efforts.
If the Palestinian people meet these goals, they will be able to reach
agreement with Israel and Egypt and Jordan on security and other arrangements
for independence.

Democracy
for Palestinians: Bushs bold plan for Mideast peace.
(06/25/02) newBy Editors of The Wall Street Journal
Its important to understand how radical this idea of democracy
is for Palestine. For years the U.S. and Israel both winked at the brutality
of Arab leaders, in the Faustian hope that they would provide stability
and peace. This was the flaw at the heart of the Oslo peace
process, in which the U.S. sub-contracted with Yasser Arafat to stop attacks
against Israel. But this was impossible as long as Mr. Arafat and other
Palestinian leaders derived all of their political legitimacy from the
struggle against Israel. Yesterday Mr. Bush said this day is over.

What
it Means: Politically, Arafat is a dead man walking (06/25/02) newBy David Landau in The Haaretz
Yasser Arafat, the seemingly immortal leader of the Palestinian
national movement, was politically assassinated Monday by President George
W. Bush. His role as Israels prospective partner in any future diplomatic
process was effectively snuffed out by a stern-sounding American president,
delivering his verdict on two years of violent intifada and his recipe
for a turnabout towards peace in this war-torn region. Bushs verdict:
Arafat is the guilty party.

An
End to Pretending (06/26/02) newBy Michael Kelly in The Washington Post
There is some limited truth in seeing what Bush is trying to do
in the Middle East in traditional terms  hard-liners vs. State Department
softies, etc.  but this is missing the elephant on the settee. For
better or worse  a great deal better, I think  Bush has set
the Palestinian issue within the context of a larger approach that is
fundamentally, historically radical: a rejection of decades of policy,
indeed a rejection of the entire philosophy of Middle East diplomacy.
This philosophy has rested on a willingness to accept a U.S. role as a
player in a running fraud.

Admit
terrorisms Islamic link (06/24/02) newBy Michael Medved in USA Today
Ideas  including religious ones  have consequences,
and examining those consequences is the best way to judge them. Americans
are mature enough to handle the inescapable truth that our daily dangers
come not, as Hollywood would have it, from freelance misfits and nostalgic
Nazis, but from a serious and frightening Islamic mass movement implacably
devoted to our destruction.

Judgement
Day in Dallas (06/22/02)In The Tablet by Richard Major
Greater than any constitutional shift is a change in the way the
American Catholic Church and society see each other. They are not mutually
comprehending; they do not now trust each other. In Dallas justice required
the Church to humble itself before society and accept the demands of public
opinion. But the shattering effect of its humiliation will make the Church
think more freshly of its role. Cardinal George, cool and sad, declared
that this scandal would be providential if it made the Church
look beyond the particular and attend to the wider context of American
society. He said: The Church was weakened even before this crisis
began; for a generation we have experienced profound loss. How are we
to be the Catholic Church within this kind of culture? Then the
cardinal spelled out his view of American civilisation, and the journalists
began squirming, stirring in their seats, laughing nervously and snorting
 which is the effect truth sometimes has on journalists. Our
culture is secularised protestantism, self-righteous and decadent at the
same time, Cardinal George said baldly. In such a culture, how can
the Church understand itself? How can it, smaller perhaps but faithful
as it is likely to be, he said, understand anew celibacy, or homosexuality,
which society does not pretend to understand either? To whom do
we really listen? he asked.

Trying
to Restore a Faith (06/15/02)By Frank Keating in The New York Times
Yesterday I accepted a request by the United States Conference of
Catholic Bishops to become chairman of a special lay commission that will
address the crisis of confidence — and in too many cases, a crisis of
faith — in my church. I undertook this task after much thought and prayer,
and only after specific criteria were established defining the powers
and goals of the commission. Those goals can be easily summarized: to
protect the innocent from abuse and exploitation, and to restore faith
in the church and its leadership.

God
Save Us From Democracy (06/20/02)By J. P. Zmirak at FrontPage Magazine
The Vatican, for all its reputation as an international power broker,
is little more than a (very tall) bully pulpit; the pope has a staff of
a few hundred overworked men and women, a budget smaller than most Fortune
500 corporations, and no legal leverage. Under these constraints, it labors
around the world, nudging bishops, persuading statesmen, sending missionaries,
mediating wars, caring for the poor, trying to keep the Moslems from slaughtering
nuns and the West from eating its young. It’s an inhuman task; that the
Church succeeds at all, and has not already collapsed, ought to impress
any skeptic that there’s something mysterious about this organization....
Would that happen, if ordinary Catholics — not just trouble-making, orthodox
intellectuals like me — got involved in choosing bishops? In changing
Church policy? You bet it would. Andrew Greeley, erotic novelist and weathervane,
is probably right when he says that the average American Catholic wants
both condoms and altar rails, easy divorce and Ave Maria,
sung at his daughter’s third church wedding. Subject Church teachings
to plebiscite — remembering that a majority of American Catholics voted
for Clinton and Gore — and what will you get? God only knows. And that’s
why he’s protecting the Church from democracy.

Throw
Away the Key: Well, not really  but hold Padilla for as long as
necessary. (06/20/02)By Rich Lowry at National Review Online
Embedded in all this heated rhetoric is the idea that there is no
check on the executives authority in the Padilla case. But habeas
corpus has not been repealed (if it had been, that would indeed be news,
and actually endanger our rights). Which means that if the heavy-breathers
are correct and Padillas rights are so obviously being trampled,
his lawyer can challenge the constitutionality of his detention in court.
Which is exactly what she  with plenty of help from the ACLU 
is going to do.

Powells
Trial Balloon (06/17/02)By William Safire in The New York Times
1. Statehood, even if qualified as provisional or interim, confers
a degree of sovereignty. That means control of borders, the ability to
make treaties, and to import arms from Iraq and by sea from Iran. 2. Partial
statehood would give Arafat control of an airport. A plane loaded with
fuel or explosives could hit a major Tel Aviv building within three minutes,
too quickly for Israeli jets to scramble. Ritual condemnation would follow.
3. Any form of statehood would limit Israels ability to search out
bomb factories and arrest terrorist leaders. What is now a tolerable sweep
into disputed territory would be denounced in the U.N. as invasion pure
and simple. That would trigger European economic boycotts and draw Arab
allies into a wider war.

Qaedas
New Links Increase Threats From Global Sites (06/16/02)In The New York Times by David Johnston, Don Van Natta
Jr. and Judith Miller
A group of midlevel operatives has assumed a more prominent role
in Al Qaeda and is working in tandem with Middle Eastern extremists across
the Islamic world, senior government officials say. They say the alliance,
which extends from North Africa to Southeast Asia, now poses the most
serious terrorist threat to the United States. This new alliance of terrorists,
though loosely knit, is as fully capable of planning and carrying out
potent attacks on American targets as the more centralized network once
led by Osama bin Laden, the officials said.

Arrests
Reveal Al Qaeda Plans: Three Saudis Seized by Morocco Outline Post-Afghanistan
Strategy (06/16/02)In The Washington Post by Peter Finn
Besieged by U.S. and allied forces in December in the mountains
of eastern Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden commanded his fighters to disperse
across the globe to attack American and Jewish interests,
according to accounts officials here say they have obtained from three
al Qaeda operatives who were captured in Morocco. The three men, citizens
of Saudi Arabia, have told interrogators that they escaped Afghanistan
and came to Morocco on a mission to use bomb-laden speedboats for suicide
attacks on U.S. and British warships in the Strait of Gibraltar, senior
Moroccan officials said. The men were captured in May in a joint Moroccan-CIA
operation.

Scholar
warns West of Muslim goals (06/18/02)At United Press International by Uwe Siemon-Netto
A leader of the small worldwide Muslim reform movement warned the
West Tuesday against wishful thinking as the U.S. government promotes
an intensive dialogue with Islam. The dialogue is not proceeding
well because of the two-facedness of most Muslim interlocutors on the
one hand and the gullibility of well-meaning Western idealists on the
other, said Bassam Tibi.

Iraqs
tortured children (06/22/02)By John Sweeney of BBC News
Ali talked about the paranoid frenzy that rules Baghdad  the
tortures, the killings, the corruption, the crazy gangster violence of
Saddam and his two sons. And the faking of the mass baby funerals. You
may have seen them on TV. Small white coffins parading through the streets
of Baghdad on the roofs of taxis, an angry crowd of mourners, condemning
Western sanctions for killing the children of Iraq. Usefully, the ages
of the dead babies  three days old, four days
old  are written in English on the coffins. I wonder who did
that.

2
FBI Whistle-Blowers Allege Lax Security, Possible Espionage
(06/19/02)In The Washington Post by James V. Grimaldi
In separate cases, two new FBI whistle-blowers are alleging mismanagement
and lax security  and in one case possible espionage  among
those who translate and oversee some of the FBIs most sensitive,
top-secret wiretaps in counterintelligence and counterterrorist investigations.
The allegations of one of the whistle-blowers have prompted two key senators
 Judiciary Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Charles E. Grassley
(R-Iowa)  to pose critical questions about the FBI division working
on the front line of gathering and analyzing wiretaps.

Stop
 in the Name of Hate! (06/19/02)
By Chris Weinkopf at FrontPage Magazine
To the champions of hate-crime legislation, not all victims 
and not all criminals  are the same. Race, sex, religion, or sexual
preferences are crucial. They distinguish truly ghastly crimes from the
mundane. Which groups are entitled to special protection (or extra prosecution)
depends entirely on which biases the self-proclaimed enemies of bias enshrine
that day.

Web
Thinkers Warn of Culture Clash (06/21/02)In The Washington Post by Anick Jesdanun of Associated
Press
The Internets potential for promoting expression and empowering
citizens is under threat from corporate and government policies that clash
with the mediums long-standing culture of openness, some leading
Internet thinkers warned. At the annual Internet Society conference this
week in Arlington, the engineers who built the Internet and many of the
policymakers who follow its development urged caution as governments try
to exert control and businesses look to maximize profits.

Prepare
for the big chill (06/22/02)By Andrew Kenny in The Spectator
When the global warmers tell us that the stakes are very high, they
are quite right. Global warming has become an immense international gravy
train worth billions of dollars. It is now one of the largest recipients
of government research money in the world. It finances jobs, grants, conferences,
international travel and journals. It not only keeps a huge army of people
in comfortable employment but also fills them with self-righteousness
and moral superiority, and satisfies those deep instincts in the Green
movement for meddling, hectoring, controlling and censuring.

Silent Spring
at 40: Rachel Carsons classic is not aging well. (06/12/02)By Ronald Bailey at Reason Online
So 40 years after the publication of Silent Spring, the legacy
of Rachel Carson is more troubling than her admirers will acknowledge.
The book did point to problems that had not been adequately addressed,
such as the effects of DDT on some wildlife. And given the state of the
science at the time she wrote, one might even make the case that Carson’s
concerns about the effects of synthetic chemicals on human health were
not completely unwarranted. Along with other researchers, she was simply
ignorant of the facts. But after four decades in which tens of billions
of dollars have been wasted chasing imaginary risks without measurably
improving American health, her intellectual descendants don’t have the
same excuse.

Federal
Judge Throws Out Charge in Shoe Bomb Case (06/11/02)By The Associated Press at FOXNews
A judge threw out one of nine charges Tuesday against a man accused
of trying to blow up a jetliner with explosives in his shoes, ruling that
an airplane is not a vehicle under a new anti-terrorism law. The charge
 attempting to wreck a mass transportation vehicle  was filed
under the USA Patriot Act, which was passed by Congress after the Sept.
11 terrorist attacks. U.S. District Judge William Young said that although
an airplane was engaged in mass transportation it is not a vehicle as
defined by the new law.

Dispatcher
Says She Was Told Not to Report Shoe-Bomb Incident (06/13/02)In The New York Times by Matthew L. Wald
The American Airlines dispatcher who was monitoring a trans-Atlantic
flight when the captain reported that a passenger had a shoe bomb said
today that her supervisor tried to prevent her from notifying the authorities.
The supervisor worried that law enforcement officials would delay the
plane on the ground, the dispatcher said. In a complaint filed with the
Federal Aviation Administration, the dispatcher said her supervisor instructed
me to hold off informing the authorities because the flight would be remotely
parked, and it would be forever before we could get the plane out
of there.

Shoe-bomb
flight conduct criticized (06/13/02)In The Dallas Morning News by Jim Morris
The American Airlines dispatcher who helped guide the flight carrying
a suspected shoe-bomber to a safe landing in December alleged in a whistle-blower
complaint Wednesday that airline supervisors interfered with her during
the incident and threatened her afterward. In a complaint filed with the
director of the Federal Aviation Administrations Whistleblower Protection
Program, Julie Robichaux, a 12-year American employee, said she was subjected
to intimidation, threats and disciplinary action after criticizing
the airlines handling of Flight 63 on Dec. 22.

Post-Sept.
11 Backlash Proves Difficult to Quantify (06/12/02)In The New Jersey Law Journal by Jim Edwards
With five lawsuits filed in three states last week by the American
Civil Liberties Union, all alleging racial profiling of Arabs and Asians
on airplanes, Americans could be forgiven for thinking that the attacks
on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had turned the country into
a nation of vigilantes and bigots. But 10 months after the events, the
official numbers tell a less alarming story. While there certainly was
a hike in such bias claims since September, its hard to say that
the increase was serious or even statistically significant.

Much
of Sept. 11 Charity Remains to Be Disbursed (06/11/02)In The Washington Post by Lena H. Sun, Sarah Cohen and
Jacqueline L. Salmon
Of the $2.3 billion raised by the largest charities in the nine
months since the terrorist attacks, 29 cents of each dollar has gone to
the survivors of those killed. A survey by The Washington Post of the
major charities, which raised virtually all of the funds that flowed in
after Sept. 11, found that roughly 20 cents of each dollar has gone to
displaced workers and others affected by the attacks and an additional
40 cents has yet to be distributed. Several charities reported that money
continues to come in  in one case an average of $21,500 a day 
even though the organizations have long since ended their appeals for
donations.

The
State of the Special Relationship (June 2002)By Robin Harris in Policy Review
If America’s European allies only France and Britain possessed a
significant capacity to assist in the war on terrorism, and only Britain
had the will. A British task force was accordingly deployed in the Gulf;
British submarines fired Tomahawks against Taliban targets on two occasions.
Within Afghanistan, members of Britain’s SAS regiment  without doubt
the most skilled special service forces in the world  performed
taxing and dangerous tasks with great success, notably in attacking the
al Qaeda training camp outside Kandahar and in hand-to-hand fighting in
the Tora Bora region. British forces are still involved in mopping-up
operations against the enemy. The pity is that from first to last these
exploits have mattered little in the overall outcome. This has been America’s
war, and the U.S. has fought it according to its own battle plan and almost
entirely with its own resources.

Advice
to Graduates About Advice (06/06/1971)By Edward C. Banfield at Claremont McKenna College
Figures of speech, especially metaphors, are peculiarly serviceable
to people who give advice about social problems. The use of them tends
to create an emotional response in the listener that enhances the urgency
of the problem thus raising the value of the putative solution
that the advice-giver offers. I sometimes wonder if we could have an urban
crisis without a good supply of metaphors. Suppose that a writer
could not speak of decaying neighborhoods but instead had
to say what he meant straight out  say that the well-off have moved
away from aging unfashionable neighborhoods, that this has given the less
well-off opportunities to move into housing better than they formerly
had, and that they, for obvious reasons, are in most instances disposed
to spend less on the repair and maintenance of houses than the former
occupiers were. Or suppose that a United States Senator instead of saying,
as one recently did, that the cities are mortally sick and getting
sicker and that the states are in a state of chronic crisis
had to speak plainly  in this instance, perhaps, to say that although
in the last decade the cities and states have increased their revenues
by a factor of three, there are nevertheless many voters who would like
to have more spent, provided of course that the taxes are paid mainly
by others.

The
End of History? (Summer 1989)By Francis Fukuyama in The National Interest
The triumph of the West, of the Western idea, is evident first of
all in the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to Western
liberalism. In the past decade, there have been unmistakable changes in
the intellectual climate of the worlds two largest communist countries,
and the beginnings of significant reform movements in both. But this phenomenon
extends beyond high politics and it can be seen also in the ineluctable
spread of consumerist Western culture in such diverse contexts as the
peasants markets and color television sets now omnipresent throughout
China, the cooperative restaurants and clothing stores opened in the past
year in Moscow, the Beethoven piped into Japanese department stores, and
the rock music enjoyed alike in Prague, Rangoon, and Tehran. What we may
be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a
particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such:
that is, the end point of mankinds ideological evolution and the
universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human
government. This is not to say that there will no longer be events to
fill the pages of Foreign Affairss yearly summaries
of international relations, for the victory of liberalism has occurred
primarily in the realm of ideas or consciousness and is as yet incomplete
in the real or material world. But there are powerful reasons for believing
that it is the ideal that will govern the material world in the long run.

An
Explosion of Green (Apr. 1995)By Bill McKibben in The Atlantic
In the early nineteenth century the cleric Timothy Dwight reported
that the 240-mile journey from Boston to New York City passed through
no more than twenty miles of forest. Surveying the changes wrought by
farmers and loggers in New Hampshire, he wrote, The forests are
not only cut down, but there appears little reason to hope that they will
ever grow again. Less than two centuries later, despite great increases
in the states population, 90 percent of New Hampshire is covered
by forest. Vermont was 35 percent woods in 1850 and is 80 percent today,
and even Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island have seen woodlands
rebound to the point where they cover nearly three fifths of southern
New England. This process, which began as farmers abandoned the cold and
rocky pastures of the East for the fertile fields of the Midwest, has
not yet run its course.... This unintentional and mostly unnoticed renewal
of the rural and mountainous East  not the spotted owl, not the
salvation of Alaskas pristine ranges  represents the great
environmental story of the United States, and in some ways of the whole
world. Here, where suburb and megalopolis were
added to the worlds vocabulary, an explosion of green is under way,
one that could offer hope to much of the rest of the planet.

The
Doomslayer (Feb. 1997)By Ed Regis in Wired
The world is getting progressively poorer, and its all because
of population, or more precisely, overpopulation. Theres
a finite store of resources on our pale blue dot, spaceship Earth, our
small and fragile tiny planet, and were fast approaching its ultimate
carrying capacity. The limits to growth are finally upon us, and were
living on borrowed time. The laws of population growth are inexorable.
Unless we act decisively, the final result is written in stone: mass poverty,
famine, starvation, and death. Time is short, and we have to act now.
Thats the standard and canonical litany.... Theres just one
problem with The Litany, just one slight little wee imperfection: every
item in that dim and dreary recitation, each and every last claim, is
false.... Thus saith The Doomslayer, one Julian
L. Simon, a neither shy nor retiring nor particularly mild-mannered
professor of business administration at a middling eastern-seaboard state
university. Simon paints a somewhat different picture of the human condition
circa 1997. Our species is better off in just about every measurable
material way, he says. Just about every important long-run
measure of human material welfare shows improvement over the decades and
centuries, in the United States and the rest of the world. Raw materials
 all of them  have become less scarce rather than more. The
air in the US and in other rich countries is irrefutably safer to breathe.
Water cleanliness has improved. The environment is increasingly healthy,
with every prospect that this trend will continue.

A brilliant parody:

Transgressing
the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity
(Spring/Summer 1996)By Alan Sokal in Social Text
There are many natural scientists, and especially physicists, who
continue to reject the notion that the disciplines concerned with social
and cultural criticism can have anything to contribute, except perhaps
peripherally, to their research. Still less are they receptive to the
idea that the very foundations of their worldview must be revised or rebuilt
in the light of such criticism. Rather, they cling to the dogma imposed
by the long post-Enlightenment hegemony over the Western intellectual
outlook, which can be summarized briefly as follows: that there exists
an external world, whose properties are independent of any individual
human being and indeed of humanity as a whole; that these properties are
encoded in eternal physical laws; and that human beings can
obtain reliable, albeit imperfect and tentative, knowledge of these laws
by hewing to the objective procedures and epistemological
strictures prescribed by the (so-called) scientific method.

... and, in explanation, ...

A
Physicist Experiments with Cultural Studies (May/June 1996)By Alan Sokal in Lingua Franca
For some years Ive been troubled by an apparent decline in
the standards of rigor in certain precincts of the academic humanities.
But Im a mere physicist: If I find myself unable to make heads or
tails of jouissance and differance, perhaps that just reflects
my own inadequacy. So, to test the prevailing intellectual standards,
I decided to try a modest (though admittedly uncontrolled) experiment:
Would a leading North American journal of cultural studies  whose
editorial collective includes such luminaries as Fredric Jameson and Andrew
Ross  publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it
sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors ideological preconceptions?
The answer, unfortunately, is yes.... Whats going on here? Could
the editors really not have realized that my article was written as a
parody?

Networks
Need a Reality Check: A firsthand account of liberal bias at CBS News.
(02/13/1996)By Bernard Goldbert in The Wall Street Journal
There are lots of reasons fewer people are watching network news,
and one of them, Im more convinced than ever, is that our viewers
simply dont trust us. And for good reason. The old argument that
the networks and other media elites have a liberal bias is
so blatantly true that its hardly worth discussing anymore. No,
we dont sit around in dark corners and plan strategies on how were
going to slant the news. We dont have to. It comes naturally to
most reporters.

There
is No Time, There Will Be Time (11/18/1998)By Peggy Noonan in Forbes ASAP
When you consider who is gifted and crazed with rage... when you
think of the terrorist places and the terrorist countries... who do they
hate most? The Great Satan, the United States. What is its most important
place? Some would say Washington. I would say the great city of the United
States is the great city of the world, the dense 10-mile-long island called
Manhattan, where the economic and media power of the nation resides, the
city that is the psychological center of our modernity, our hedonism,
our creativity, our hard-shouldered hipness, our unthinking arrogance.

The
1911 Edition Encyclopedia Britannica
This 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica is filled with
historical information that is still relevant today. It fills 29 volumes
and contains over 44 million words. The articles are written by more than
1500 authors within their various fields of expertise.

The
September 11 Web Archive
This collection of archived documents was commissioned by the Library
of Congress to preserve digital materials covering the events of September
11, 2001.

US
Election 2000
This collection was commissioned by the Library of Congress to archive
digital materials covering the Election of 2000. It contains 800 gigabytes
of data gathered from 8/1/2000 to 1/21/2001.

A chronicle of high-level USA government actions
in September 2001, at two websites:

Ten
Days in September (WP)
This series is based on interviews with President Bush, Vice President
Cheney and many other key officials inside the administration and out.
The interviews were supplemented by notes of National Security Council
meetings made available to The Washington Post, along with notes taken
by several participants.

HTI
American Verse Project
The American Verse Project is a collaborative project between the
University of Michigan Humanities Text Initiative (HTI) and the University
of Michigan Press. The project is assembling an electronic archive of
volumes of American poetry prior to 1920.

What
We Think of America (Granta)
In this issue twenty-four writers drawn from many countries describe
the part America has played in their lives  for better or worse
 and deliver their estimate of the good and the bad it has done
as the worlds supreme political, military, economic and cultural
power.

A
Trust Betrayed:
Sexual Abuse by Teachers (Education Week)
This three-part series on child sex abuse by school employees is
the result of a six-month project by Education Week involving scores of
interviews with state and local education and law-enforcement officials,
other experts, teachers, principals, parents, and victims, as well as
an extensive review of court documents, journal articles, and public-policy
records.

The
Crusades (Catholic Dossier)
It is difficult for one who lives in an increasingly secularized
society not to be influenced by its prejudices. One of the great misunderstandings
in the West, even among Catholics, has to do with the Crusades. This issue
of Catholic Dossier provides fundamental and irrefutable historical
information about what actually happened and why.

Pope
Pius XII (Catholic Dossier)
The accomplishments of the Vatican diplomatic corps in the various
countries occupied by the Germans, over which the sinister Eichmann preyed,
had received the plaudits of all free men, not least those in the new
country of Israel. There groves were planted in honor of the Pope and
of many of his nuncios, not least Cardinal Roncalli who, as nuncio in
Istanbul, had been the good right arm of Pius in rescuing Jews. Pius XII
escaped martyrdom during his lifetime, but he has been subjected to the
martyrdom of vilification, defamation and incredible falsification after
his death.

The
New Rise of Islam (Catholic World Report)
Late in the 20th century, the renewed vigor of Islam has become
one of the most important developments on the world scene. By dint of
their energetic proselytism, their migration to new lands, and their high
birth rate, Muslims are rapidly gaining attention and influence in many
countries where their faith has heretofore been virtually unknown. CWR
aims to make readers better acquainted with Islam, with a primer on the
religious principles, and public practices of that faith.

Christianity
and Islam, Terrorism and War (Catholic World Report)
Why have thousands of Muslims joined in anti-American protests in
Pakistan, Kenya, and Indonesia since the start of the US air strikes on
terrorist bases in Afghanistan? These demonstrators are not all supporters
of al-Qaeda, thirsting for American blood; they are not Arabs, caught
up in the political turmoil of the Middle East. They are united only by
the Muslim faith. Is it Islam, then, that prods them toward violence?

The
Cross and the Crescent (Catholic World Report)
To a remarkable degree, America has united behind President Bush
in the war on terrorism. For the first time since World War II there is
an overwhelming consensus that we are fighting a necessary battle, for
a just cause. That national unity is a clear sign of strength, and a clear
warning to our enemies. Nevertheless, beneath the surface of that consensus
the careful observer can still detect signs of the fault lines within
American society. We are united against terrorists, but divided among
ourselves.

OxBlog
The political rantings of Josh Chafetz, a graduate student in political
theory at Oxford, Dan Urman, a graduate student in international relations
at Oxford, and Anand Giridharadas, a junior at the University of Michigan
spending the year at Oxford.

Four columns by Rod Dreher at National Review
Online about the June bishops meeting in Dallas:

The
Dallas Outlook: The American bishops need a conversion. (06/12/02)
The final hurdle the bishops must clear is... themselves. Catholics
and non-Catholics alike have been sickened and astonished to confront
the repugnant sex crimes — child-rape chief among them — committed by
priests. They wonder, as any normal person would, what kind of men in
a position of authority can learn of these unspeakable acts and fail to
act to stop them. They wonder, as any normal person would, what kind of
Christian leaders would protect child predators, unleash lawyers on victims
of these priests, and publicly lie about these matters. They wonder, as
any normal person would, why, after all that failed bishops have on their
conscience — including secret sexual sin of their own — they do not resign,
and go to a monastery to do penance for the rest of their lives.

Dallas
Diary: In town with the bishops. (06/13/02)
One wonders why the bishops refused the offer of the Catholic Medical
Association, a group whose number includes faithful Catholic psychiatrists
who actually believe what the Church teaches, to offer their expertise
at this meeting. Actually, given the lavender mafias power, one
does not wonder for long. Heres a recent open
letter from one of the CMAs leaders, to the bishops,
saying that same-sex attraction in the priesthood is at the heart of this
scandal. The bishops dont want to hear it. And neither do the media.
Im hearing from inside press circles that reporters, editors and
producers dont want to look at the gay issue. Michael S. Rose, author
of Goodbye, Good Men, is in Dallas. I spoke yesterday to a TV reporter
who wants to interview Rose about his findings, but who received word
from the top to stay away from him. I cant prove it, but from the
anecdotes Im hearing, the need to avoid the elephant in the
sacristy, in Mary Eberstadts memorable
phrase, is perhaps the only point on which the bishops and
the media agree.

Dallas
Diary, Part II: Outside and around the main event. (06/14/02)
Also absent from the conference: any official place for conservative
voices of reform. Appleby and Steinfels had some good things to say, certainly,
but concluded with liberal-style calls for more lay involvement. This
doesnt look good, said Phil Lawler, editor of Catholic
World Report. Who on the agenda, anywhere on the agenda, is
known as a stalwart defender of Catholic teaching on sexual morality?
Lawlers comment gets to the heart of why conservatives are not welcome
here: They would have raised the issue of homosexuality among the clergy,
absent which this scandal cannot be fully understood, much less dealt
with. Helen Hull Hitchcock, leader of the orthodox Women for Faith and
Family, asked the bishops in an afternoon press conference what it meant
that as many as 90 percent of these publicly known abuse cases involve
priests having sex with teenage boys. She did not get a straight answer,
so to speak.

Done
in Dallas: The problems that persist. (06/17/02)
Though the policy they adopted on Friday is clearly the strongest
stand theyve ever taken against priest sex abuse, and that there
is a lot of good in it (even if it will probably be rejected by Rome),
there is little reason to believe that it is much more than a quick-fix
pseudo-solution, a bone tossed to quiet the baying pack of journalists
and lay activists. One is most impressed not by what they did, but by
what they left undone. Aside from not addressing the root causes of the
scandal, the bishops refused to accept personal accountability for their
paramount role in the scandal. Not one resigned. Not one was asked to
resign, at least publicly. Words of apology ring hollow when not followed
by action. As C. S. Lewis said, A long face is not a moral disinfectant.

Joe Klein is writing a multi-part report from
Europe for The Guardian:

France?
Its like 1970s America (05/28/02)
Over the next six weeks, Joe Klein, Americas leading political
commentator, will be travelling through Europe for the Guardian. Today,
36 years after he first arrived there in search of dark-eyed lovelies
with difficult personalities, he reports from France

The
Prince (06/06/02)
Is Silvio Berlusconi a medieval thowback to a time when rich men
could buy power? Or the shape of things to come? And is he dangerous 
or just a colourful rogue? In the second of his weekly dispatches from
Europe, Joe Klein meets the billionaire prime minister who just wants
to be loved

How
the Solidarity dream turned sour (06/12/02)
Poland was eastern Europes great success story, a reborn country
that had embraced free markets and liberal democracy and stood poised
to join the EU. But now its economy is in tatters and ugly Catholic nationalism
is on the rise. In the third of his weekly dispatches from Europe, Joe
Klein asks what went wrong

How
Germany was suffocated (06/19/02)
For 57 years Germany has been struggling to make amends for its
Nazi past and be accepted by its neighbours. But has its desire to avoid
discord stifled the nation's public life and prevented much needed reform?
On the fourth leg of his European tour, Joe Klein finds a society addled
by ferocious blandness

newWhos
in charge here? (06/26/02)
The great European project has three  or maybe four 
presidents, two foreign policy chiefs and endless, baffling bureaucracy.
So can it really hold its own against the might of the US? In the fifth
instalment of his continental odyssey, Joe Klein travels to Brussels and
Seville to find out

The Problem of Sexual Molestation by Roman Catholic
Clergy: Meeting the Problem in a Comprehensive and Responsible Manner
(the 1985 report to American Bishops):

Second
Part
Summary of Considerations (cont.), Project Proposal, Scope of Services,
Strategy, Conclusion

Related articles in The New York Times on the
last messages to come out of the World Trade Center after the first plane
struck:

History
Recorded From the Messages of Victims (05/26/02)
The primary sources for todays article are interviews with
more than 140 people who communicated with individuals on the upper floors
of the twin towers, and conversations with 17 others who were at or above
the impact zone in the south tower but escaped. Additionally, eight people
described conditions just below the impact zone in the north tower.

102
Minutes: Fighting to Live as the Towers Died (05/26/02)
They began as calls for help, information, guidance. They quickly
turned into soundings of desperation, and anger, and love. Now they are
the remembered voices of the men and women who were trapped on the high
floors of the twin towers. From their last words, a haunting chronicle
of the final 102 minutes at the World Trade Center has emerged, built
on scores of phone conversations and e-mail and voice messages. These
accounts, along with the testimony of the handful of people who escaped,
provide the first sweeping views from the floors directly hit by the airplanes
and above. Collected by reporters for The New York Times, these last words
give human form to an all but invisible strand of this stark, public catastrophe:
the advancing destruction across the top 19 floors of the north tower
and the top 33 of the south, where loss of life was most severe on Sept.
11. Of the 2,823 believed dead in the attack on New York, at least 1,946,
or 69 percent, were killed on those upper floors, an analysis by The Times
has found.

Accounts
From the North Tower (05/26/02)
Following are accounts from survivors of the attack on the World
Trade Centers North Tower and the friends and relatives of the victims.

Accounts
From the South Tower (05/26/02)
Following are accounts from survivors of the attack on the World
Trade Centers South Tower and the friends and relatives of the victims.

This is a reprint of a column
originally published Feb. 11, The Premier Issue.

At first, I was merely amused. Shortly, I was decidedly appalled.

I was reading an article
about some goings-on at Baylor University, in the Waco Tribune-Herald,
November 1, 2001. Some students were objecting to the prominent
placement, in a well-traveled area, of a display featuring larger-than-life
pictures of aborted fetuses.

Baylor student Erin Connors, president of the campus organization
that was responsible for bringing the two-day display to the school,
said, I feel like were just presenting the truth and
the facts.... This is reality. Were not trying to hide that.

Another Baylor student, a female junior, made a complaint that
really caught my eye. To spare her further embarrassment, I will
refrain from telling you her name. Besides, I have a feeling she
is not alone; so, to avoid getting personal, lets just call
her Missy Baylor.

I believe, said Missy Baylor, that if you cant
avoid (seeing or hearing) something, that is oppressive.

I laughed aloud, and said to myself, Is that what passes for
oppression on college campuses these days?

I went on with my websurfing, and immediately came upon an article
in the London Times, dated the same day, about an Afghan
man identified only as Karimullah, in his mid-twenties. He was jailed
by the Taliban in 1999 for having served with the mujahedin for
the Northern Alliance.

One day, after about 12 weeks of imprisonment, Karimullah was taken
from his cell and driven to a stadium where thousands of people
were assembled. About a dozen mullahs sat in a row in the middle
of the field, and he was placed on the ground before them.

Seven doctors approached me, he told the reporter.
They wore grey uniforms, surgical masks and gloves. I could
see one was crying. They injected me. After five minutes my body
was numb though I was still conscious. Then they put clamps on my
hand and foot and began to cut them off with special saws. There
was no pain but I could see what they were doing.

In five minutes, his left foot and right hand had become spare
meat.

He knows no reason for the public spectacle of his brutal treatment,
though rumors have reached him that a wealthy man had paid the mullahs
to substitute Karimullah to undergo the punishment required for
his own crimes.

He was hospitalized for a while, then released to go home. At the
sight of him thus maimed, his mother collapsed; already in poor
health, she died a few hours later of a heart attack.

And... and... can you believe it? Missy Baylor thinks
she is oppressed when she has to walk past a display,
for two days, that might actually make her think about something
she would rather ignore.

Juxtaposing in my mind the stories of Karimullah and Missy Baylor,
which I had read one after the other, my amusement at her attitude
changed: this young woman has a life of convenience, privilege,
and luxury of which many  perhaps most  people around
the world can only dream.

No, her attitude isnt amusing: its appalling.

Most people alive on the Earth today would consider Missy Baylor
a child of immense privilege. Radio, television, newspapers, magazines,
and computers can bring her the latest news from around the world,
with little or no effort on her part, and with little or no official
censorship; libraries, housing the accumulated wisdom of centuries,
are free (or practically so) for her use; medical treatment 
to heal, not to harm  is surely available to her without much
more trouble than the making of a phone call, whether for minor
complaints or for life-saving surgery; she may engage in the free
exchange of ideas, and take part in the daily criticism of government
and officials at all levels, that would bring swift  perhaps
deadly  reprisal in many nations of today, let alone those
of former ages.

Indeed, most absolute monarchs of centuries past  with the
power of life or death at their command  could not have imagined
as luxuries the ordinary conveniences Missy Baylor takes for granted
daily. Artificial light at the flick of a switch, any time of day
or night; waste flushed away at the touch of a handle; hot water
in a few moments at the twist of a knob; fresh fruits and vegetables
available year-round at a market which may be a few blocks away,
to be reached in minutes by walking, or a few miles away, to be
reached in minutes by driving or riding.

Even today, hundreds of millions of men, women, and children around
the world can only dream about the simple facts and ordinary realities
of daily life in a civilization of technology, in a society of free
assembly, movement, and expression.

No cosmic coincidence has arranged that such a life of convenience,
privilege, and luxury exists among men most typically in those nations
where freedom of assembly, movement, and expression have reigned
longest and most assuredly.

Missy Baylor ought to kiss the ground she walks on  the land
of a nation whose society is founded on the Judeo-Christian value
of the dignity of the person and on the Anglo-American
value of the rule of law. Without those values, and the
society built upon them, her life of convenience, privilege, and
luxury would be impossible. For evidence, merely look to the realities
of daily life where those values never took root or did not bear
fruit.

Yes, Missy Baylor ought to kiss the ground she walks on 
especially now that we have learned to our sorrow that the ground
we walk on can be turned into a gaping inferno of death, without
warning: malicious men, with no thought of the dignity of the
person or the rule of law, are learning to use our
immense privileges and daily conveniences against us.

America: Land of the Oppressed? May all the citizens of the world
some day be so fortunate as to be as oppressed as Missy Baylor.
I think that I might know of a man far away who just may have been
willing to give a hand or a foot to be able to live as she does
 but he no longer has any to spare.